THE October half-term is here. Where are you going for another doomed attempt at a holiday? Try these hellholes:
North Wales
The hotels and static caravans of North Wales are built to withstand lashing, horizontal rain, just like their castles were built to keep out English invaders. But after spending 48 hours trapped indoors with your family you’ll realise that getting drenched while exploring a disused slate mine is more fun. If anything it’ll toughen you up for Christmas at your in-laws.
Cornwall
The absence of crowds, second-home owners, and the tourism industries which have f**ked off now summer’s over has revealed that Cornwall is nothing more than a rocky peninsula stretching out into the cold, dark, murderous Atlantic waves. To make things worse, this means the gastropubs have jacked up their prices.
The Cairngorms
Just because you know in advance that Scotland will be dark, wet and bone-achingly cold doesn’t mean you’re prepared for it. The mountains are beautiful, the landscape is devoid of life and, like the natives, everywhere is implacably hostile.
Brighton
You like London and you like the seaside, so why not visit London-by-the-Sea? Answer: because the beach is made of uncomfortable rocks instead of sand, the seagulls are higher than you on the food chain, and the residents are just as twatty as Londoners despite living in a drab off-season coastal town. You’re better off in Hove.
Nottingham
The Airbnbs are cheap here, so a family holiday in Nottingham strikes you as a no-brainer. Plus Wikipedia says it’s a friendly city with lots of exciting tourist attractions, and since when has the internet ever been wrong about anything? Two days in you’ll be so bored that getting chased by the police for kicking a pigeon will be the highlight of your week.
Middlesbrough
Rather than trying to wring any joy from the sputtering, dying flame of 2021, lean into the misery and spend a week in a city-sized petrochemical works where the inhabitants can’t understand you and don’t want to. You’ll return home delighted that you don’t live there all year round.
Driving around the M25 in a campervan
You can’t tour Europe anymore and Britain’s uniformly awful. So why not simply drive around the country’s busiest motorway for seven days straight, sleeping in lay-bys in orbital towns and shitting in Aldi bags like the Romanian truckers used to? You’ll be able to tell everyone that you’ve seen the real Britain they don’t show you in brochures.
